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Women in later years prepare for bat mitzvahs
Barbara Feld, center, in blue, leads a bat-mitzvah class for elderly Jewish women at an assisted-living facility in Charlotte, N.C.
MCT photo
Barbara Feld, standing in center, helps Francis Gottheim as Feld leads a bat-mitzvah class for elderly Jewish women at an assisted-living facility in Charlotte, N.C. When the women were young, many Jewish communities offered only bar-mitzvah rites for boys, so they are now getting their chance for the religious ceremony.
MCT photo
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Bella Goldin and her fellow students were practicing again: chanting their prayers in Hebrew, reading verses from the Torah, going over every detail as they prepared for a ceremony that usually marks the coming of age of 12- and 13-year-old Jewish girls and boys. But Bella, who came to all her classes in a wheelchair, is 100 years old. Most of the others were in their 80s.
Some had fading eyesight, others arthritic fingers. Two needed oxygen tanks to breathe. Still, they soldiered on every Monday for months to get ready for something none thought they’d ever experience and, in the process, proved it’s never too late to pursue a fuller life.
Recently at Charlotte’s Temple Israel, with beaming children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren looking on, each of the women became an adult bat mitzvah “daughter of the commandment.”
When they were girls in the first half of the 20th century, this rite of passage was reserved for 13-year-old boys, whose coming of age was celebrated with a bar-mitzvah ceremony.
Times have changed. Bat-mitzvah ceremonies are common today. And in the past few years, in places like suburban Cleveland, Boston and Charlotte, groups of elderly women at independent and assisted-living facilities also have claimed the ritual, and its sign of full responsibility as Jews.
“I wanted to experience something I missed,” said Ann Pruzan, the youngest member of the class at Charlotte’s Sunrise on Providence assisted-living community. She remembered feeling it was “unfair and bizarre” that girls were not treated the same as boys in the Brooklyn, N.Y., synagogue she attended as a child. Recently, at 79, she got to do what her brother, husband and son did decades ago.
Many of the women in senior bat-mitzvah groups across the country waited even longer, with some in their late 90s as they prepared for the ceremony. Charlotte had one of the oldest of them all in Bella. This retired lawyer and teacher from New York, 5 feet tall and cracking jokes, recently reached the century mark and has been the anchor — and inspiration — of the Monday-afternoon class.
“I’m happy — it’s another step in my life,” Bella said of finally being called, along with her classmates, to publicly read from the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). “I’m a little late, but I guess I got there.”
As Bella’s big birthday approached in March, Bea Gibbs of Jewish Family Services asked her how they could make it special.
I’ve done a lot in my 100 years, Bella told her. I want to do something different.
How about a bat mitzvah? Bea asked.
That sounded good to Bella, partly because she thought maybe she’d get to learn Hebrew the big thing still on her to-do list.
I’d give three of my college degrees to be really knowledgeable in Hebrew, said Bella, whose degrees include one from the University of Buffalo Law School in 1931, a time when few women ventured into lawyering.
Bea’s next challenge: Get other women interested.
The same Hebrew that attracted Bella scared Ray Fagin, 88, and some of the others. Too hard, they thought.
But Barbara Feld of Temple Beth El, who teaches the senior class, took it slow. Each week, she’d introduce a few more Hebrew words, gradually building the group’s confidence.
Ray, a model in the 1930s and ’40s, was drawn by the group’s growing camaraderie and her respect for the teaching. She plugged away, even came early to practice Hebrew.
Estelle Lieb, 80, agreed to join because her friendship with Bea a mentor and cheerleader for the seniors was greater than her stage fright.
Frances Gottheim, 86, the only member of the class who could read Hebrew, got encouragement from her family.
Then there was Edith Englander, 88, a stroke survivor whose macular degeneration had made her legally blind.
She had the desire: The retired nurse with a Boston accent had watched her three sons and husband read the Torah and say the prayers, and she wanted to do the same. If I can do it with all my ailments, she thought, others might think they could, too.
But she kept changing her mind. Everybody else in the class can see to read, she thought. All I can do is trust my memory, and try to remember my father saying the prayers.
Then Edith got assigned a helper: Rachel Udelson, 13, who volunteered as part of a project for her own upcoming bat mitzvah. Every Monday afternoon, Rachel moved her finger from one jumbo-size word to the next as Edith read them. She was an answer to my prayers, Edith said of her young friend.
As for Rachel, two things: She learned you’re never too old to do what you want. And she found she suddenly had more grandmas and great-grandmas.
The first reference to a bar mitzvah as it is understood today dates to the 16th century.
And the first bat mitzvah? 1922, in Manhattan.
The girl was Judith Kaplan, whose father, Conservative Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, found the exclusion of girls troubling. So he did something.
“No thunder sounded, no lighting struck,” Judith Kaplan told author Ari Goldman 70 years later. “The institution of bat mitzvah had been born without incident.”
In the late 1960s and early ’70s, with the rebirth of feminism, bat-mitzvah ceremonies became common.
Though there are major female Jewish figures in the Bible (Deborah, Queen Esther), the role of women in Judaism centered, for centuries, on the home. Their activity in the synagogue was limited, and men and women were separated for prayer during services.
In recent decades, much has changed, especially in Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist congregations, where men and women worship side by side. The first female rabbi in the United States retired just three years ago; she was ordained in 1972.
“The three non-Orthodox branches of Judaism are truly egalitarian today,” said Rabbi Murray Ezring of Temple Israel, a Conservative congregation.
Jewish boys and girls also tend to get elaborate themed parties. Too much “bar,” critics say, and not enough “mitzvah” (good deed).
The women of Sunrise on Providence got a brunch after their ceremony. And the hairdresser at Sunrise agreed to come in early.
On dress-rehearsal day in the chapel at Temple Israel, the women’s wheelchairs and walkers formed a straight line.
One by one, they read in Hebrew and English, from the Book of Numbers.
“And the Lord spoke to Moses …” began Bella, draped in a shawl and relying on Bea to help her stay on the right page.
Then Frances … and Ann … and Ray … and Estelle … and with the help of Rachel, Edith:
“… Ye shall present a burnt-offering unto the Lord.”
“I’m proud of you,” Ray called over to Edith.
“I’m proud of me, too.”
Then, together, sounding practiced and swelling with a sense of accomplishment, these friends chanted the blessing that comes after reading the Torah:
“Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam, Asher natan lanu torat emet …”
“Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has given us the Torah of truth and planted eternal life within us …”